The Mary Sue's Guide to Middle earth
by Tarien
Summary: Susan lands in Middle-earth and receives a whack on the head which fails to knock any sense into her. Where the whack failed, can the Guide succeed?
1. In which there was a whack on the head

For a brief period of my life, I was very much on my way to becoming a Mary Sue. I even had chapter one all written out - our, that is: Legolas and I, love was so pure. Thankfully I befriended People, who has the sense to knock me senseless and then give me a brain transplant.  
  
So this is my tribute to the Mary Sue that never was. May she writhe forever in the pits of agony that she and her kind have caused me in the months of MSTs.  
  
Disclaimer: Lord of the Rings and all its connected works belong to J. R. R. Tolkien, Eru, as far as I'm concerned. The movie, Fellowship of the Ring, on which this shall be loosely based, belongs to New Line, though I give a hearty thanks to Peter Jackson and his crew. The Hitch hiker's Guide to the Galaxy belongs to Douglas Adams. Huzzah for humour.  
  
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Susan was sulking. Susan was Pissed Off. Susan had just been called a pretentious, overweight, ignorant moron, and though she hadn't (and still didn't) really understood what most of those words meant, she had (and still did) understood 'overweight'.  
  
Susan sulked some more and sucked in her rather flabby belly. So she was a little on the chubby side. Who cared? Certainly not Legolas, the elf who visited her in her dreams and loved her for who she really was. Susan looked up and caught sight of the banner proclaiming the release of the Two Towers extended DVD as she did every day returning home from school. Legolas stared back at her. His eyes, so deep, so meaningful. Why, it was only two nights ago that he had sung to her in the voice of Justin Timberlake, and she had returned the favour in a voice not unlike Britney Spears'. Who cared that they had broken up? They would get back together. Their love was so pure.  
  
Just like the love Susan shared with Legsy...  
  
Susan was so caught up with her thoughts that she barely noticed the fact that a temporal time-reality warp had opened in front of her until she stepped right into it and found that her feet missed the ground.  
  
The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy has this to say about the subject of flying.  
  
There is an art, it says, or rather, a knack to flying. The knack lies in learning how to throw yourself at the ground and miss.  
  
And Susan was falling. Well, not falling. More like plunging while shrieking in unearthly horror. The ground, which wanted very muchly to keep its appointment with her feet, was rushing up towards her. Any moment now, she was going to splatter on the ground, a disgusting mess of girl goop.  
  
The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy also has this to say about flying:  
  
You have to miss the ground accidentally. It's no good deliberately intending to miss the ground because you won't. You have to have your attention suddenly distracted by something else when you're halfway there, so that you are no longer thinking about falling, or about the ground, or about how much it's going to hurt if you fail to miss it.  
  
As the ground got closer, Susan realised people were sitting on it. Well, not on it, but rather on chairs on it. And some other people were standing on, yes, it, looking very important and very solemn.  
  
Susan had a thought, but it vanished into the annals of Things Which Happen Once And Never Happen Again when her eyes met a certain pair of blue ones.  
  
"What the?" She said.  
  
"What the?" The eyes seemed to reply.  
  
Susan was about to faint when she realised she had missed the ground again. She was floating a few feet from it, looking very surprised.  
  
"You're Legolas." She said the the blue eyes.  
  
"You're flying. I can't believe you're flying. Susans do NOT fly." Her brain, which was still touchy about being forced to ingest some twenty Laws of Physics three days ago, told her.  
  
Susan found that she could not believe that she was flying either, and, as a result, grazed her bum quite badly against the ground.  
  
The fact that she was in the Council of Elrond, the fact that she was in Rivendell and the fact that she was in Middle-earth all failed to pass through her mind as Gimli's axe found its way to the side of her head.  
  
::Insert whiny Author's Note about Reading and Reviewing here::  
  
::Then proceed to Read and Review:: 


	2. In which there was a lot of wine

You're still with me? Excellent. I wish upon you oodles of love.  
  
A brief recap: Susan - mine. Everything else - not.  
  
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The scene outside the Healing House was chaotic at best and downright messy at least. (I'm sure I slaughtered something English there, God help me.) Several elves had come together to light candles and chant mantras about how the Redeemer had returned, out of the sky as He had promised, politely ignoring all eyewitness reports that the person who had fallen out of the sky was female, and that having any religion other than the one that believed in Eru was blaspheme and hould be stamped out. Several other elves were prophesying the end of Middle-earth as they knew it, and were trying to get everyone else to wear potato sacks and drink lots of wine in order to reach Nirvana before the end finally came.  
  
One elf, in particular, was having a very bad headache.  
  
"Nothing like this has ever happened before." Glorfindel murmured, trying to drown his disbelief in some of the wine the End of Middle-earthers were passing around. "At least," He added for a touch of politcal-correctivity. "Not in Imladris."  
  
Glorfindel was not the elf with a headache.  
  
"I sense that a great evil has entered Middle-earth." Legolas, that hot elf from Mirkwood, said.  
  
Legolas was not the elf with a headache either.  
  
Elrond hadn't meant to think of Legolas as 'that hot elf from Mirkwood'. It was, he decided, something to do with the large amounts of wine he was consuming.  
  
Aye, Elrond was the elf with the headache.  
  
He arched an eyebrow at the four hobbits who were currently having too much of the wine and too little of the sense to keep out of everyone's way. As a result, many of his elves were tripping over what seemed like a moving heap of big and furry feet.  
  
Elrond hadn't meant to think about the hobbits in such a rude manner either, but the wine was really something else.  
  
The door to the room where the Girl Who Had Fallen Out Of The Sky opened, and Erestor backed out of it, eyes wide in terror. A few minutes later, Aragorn followed, slightly less terrified, but still rather shaken. The door slammed itself shut behind him.  
  
"Estel, what happened?" Glorfindel asked. Aragorn looked wildly about him for a moment, then snatched the bottle of wine out of Elrond's hands and downing in it one gulp. Elrond made a feeble cry of protest, but settled down when Glorfindel passed him another one.  
  
"Creature... Morgoth... Evil..." Erestor mumbled incoherently from his slumped position against the wall.  
  
All activities stopped when the door to the room opened again to reveal a rather stocky girl wose hair was dishevelled and whose eyes were glazed over with sleep. A dark purple bruise coloured the side of her head, and she clutched a pink throw pillow to her chest. Elond decided he would henceforth forbid this shade of pink in his house. Yes, even if some of the other elves showed an unnatural predisposition towards it.  
  
"Legolas?" She crooned, shifting the pink throw pillow to the side of her head. Legolas whimpered and crouched down behind Elrond's chair. "I saw you, I know I did. Come to me, my love."  
  
Elrond gazed calculatively at the young princeling behind his chair. He had always known those Mirkwood elves had odd tastes when it came to women. Now, was he going to give Legolas over to the girl to shut her up, or was he going to just ask one of the dwarves to kill her instead and achieve the same effect? His wine told him he didn't like asking the dwarves for favours, especially since the dwarves were now trying to roast him lembas for 'that extra flavour'. No one dissed his mother-in-law's cooking.  
  
"Legolas! There you are!" The girl descended upon Legolas, whom Elrond had nudged forward with his toe, and tried to kiss him. Legolas, however, held on to his senses and leapt clear of her embrace. Elrond would have given him a ten for agility, but he had to take points away for the erratic Sindarin curses.  
  
There was a moment when Legolas was ready with his bow and arrow, Aragorn was ready with his sword, the hobbits were ready with some mutant mushrooms and Gimli was ready with his axe. The Redeemers (as those who belived the girl was their saviour thus named themselves) had thrown themselves in front of the girl in an effort to save her (instead of her saving them). The End of Middle-earthers were frantic about no one breaking any bottles of wine.  
  
It seemed as though something Big was about to happen. And it did.  
  
The girl ttok a deep breath and burst into song.  
  
The name of the song is irrelevant. The lyrics of the song are irrelevant. Who originally composed and sang the song is also irrelevant. What is relevant is that every man, hobbit and dwarf fell crying to the ground with their hands clapped over their ears while every elf in the vicinity proceeded to have internal hemorrhaging. Except the Redeemers, who were too busy gazing at the girl in adoration.  
  
Elrond, who was stronger than most elves in that he did not have blood seeping from his pointy ears, took a swig of wine.  
  
His headache was not in any danger of going away. 


	3. In which there were difficulties

I promise a plot is somewhere in here. I'm just not quite sure where.  
  
All hail Tolkien, writer of The Books, and dam the speling to hel.  
  
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Susan felt herself slowly regain consciousness. The process was easy - the sharp jabbing pain in her spine told her that her consciousness was very anxious to get off the cold, hard surface that she was lying on. The room around her was as silent as a grave, and certainly seemed empty, except for Susan, whose eyes were still tightly shut.  
  
She gave herself a few seconds to begin breathing slightly erratically. When there was no reaction, she gave what she thought was a wonderfully feminine moan. When there was still no reaction, she fluttered her eyelashes and rose slowly with the air of a princess awakened after a hundred years of slumber.  
  
Then she blinked in disappointment upon realizing the room was indeed, very empty.  
  
As she climbed to her feet, she realized just how a princess awakened after a hundred years of slumber really felt - her bones were screaming in protest to every slightest movement. Susan decided to stand very, very still.  
  
The air itself was very, very still.  
  
Susan frowned. Come to think of it, she wasn't entirely sure when she had fallen asleep, or what she was doing in this pitch black room with her mouth gagged and her hands tied. She didn't normally black out like this - or at least, even if she did black out (it had only ever happened once or twice. Okay, every time the coach made her run more than one lap around the track on threat of death.), she could always be sure of waking up in the nicely lit sick bay.  
  
Then the memories came rushing back at her. She had been singing, and enjoying it too, before some dwarf with lembas clamped around his ears came up and gave her a whack in the head with his axe. Susan pouted. She seemed to have an unnatural affinity with dwarves and their axes.  
  
She tried to call out, but the gag effectively cut off her communicative systems. Even the room, it seemed, was made out of the Middle-earth version of titanium. Slumping back onto the floor, Susan gave a deep sigh.  
  
If she could not sing to entertain herself, she would hum.  
  
Or at least she would, if her bum was not, at that moment, trying to tell her that she had sat on something small and oblong.  
  
---  
  
In another part of Middle-earth, they were holding a council. 'They' being the Nine Walkers who had been chosen before Susan's untimely appearance in the other council, Elrond, Bilbo, Arwen, and - to the disgust of everyone else present - The Redeemers.  
  
"Difficult. Very difficult." Gandalf was saying, his brow furrowed in a look of utmost concentration.  
  
"I can't see how we're going to get around it." Bilbo sighed sagely.  
  
"Nine! The number was nine! Nine walkers! Nine!" Elrond was having what an uninformed observer would have called a childish fit. Elrond was, however, a very old, very wise half elven lord, and as such did not throw childish fits. Only fits brought about by the consumption of large amounts of wine.  
  
The rest of the council stared at their feet, unsure of what to do. The situation was this: Susan had fallen from the sky, yea and verily, as we all know. The tricky part was this: Just as Susan had landed right smack in front of the Nine Walkers, Elrond had declared them the Fellowship of the Ring.  
  
This presented everyone present with a certain degree of difficulty.  
  
For Arwen, it was that she didn't want any shameless hussy gamboling about Middle-earth with her husband-to-be.  
  
For Aragorn, it was that he didn't want any shameless hussy gamboling about Middle-earth when he was trying to save it and fulfill his destiny while doing so.  
  
For Bilbo, it was that he didn't want any shameless hussy gamboling about Middle-earth when Frodo was still very much the innocent hobbit. Okay, so Frodo had thus far been stabbed, driven through the wild and accosted by very frisky ringwraiths, but as far as this uncle was concerned, no nephew of his would be subjected to the horrors of a teenage girl while he still had the use of his finely furry feet.  
  
For Boromir, it was that he didn't want to be seen in the general vicinity of any shameless hussy at all, because they generally only had bad things to say about his hygiene, and he happened to like his dinner plate shield, thank you very much.  
  
For Frodo, it was that he didn't want any shameless hussy trying to steal the One Ring.  
  
For Sam, it was that he didn't want any shameless hussy trying to rob Frodo of his One Ring, and virginity besides.  
  
For Merry, it was that he didn't want any shameless hussy trying to get at the food.  
  
For Pippin, it was that he didn't want any shameless hussy. Period.  
  
For Gimli, it was that he didn't want any shameless hussy distracting him while he was knocking the heads off orcs.  
  
For Gandalf, it was that he didn't want any shameless hussy running around because he would then have to expand large amounts of energy trying to keep her from sending Middle-earth to its doom when he was supposed to be spending more time being very wise, knowledgeable and annoyingly cryptic.  
  
For Legolas, it was that he had had quite enough of shameless hussies, particularly the ones that insisted on singing to him, and he was damned if he was going to go on some mission with a shameless hussy trying to rip off his pants.  
  
For The Redeemers, it was that everyone refused to stop calling their Salvation and Hope a shameless hussy, and that everyone just sat and laughed at their suggestion that if the Saviour were only given the One Ring, she would do something miraculous and Middle-earth would be saved, as it was what saviours normally went about doing, stop laughing, will you?  
  
For Elrond, it was that he had announced that the shameless hussy was part of the Fellowship of the Ring, and everyone knew his announcements were irrevocable and for the sake of the plot, he was going to have to make sure this particular announcement was carried out. If only he hadn't been preoccupied with trying to make his eyebrows arch the right way, he would've seen Susan before she had landed on the ground and he would have kept his lips tightly pressed together in a way that suggested that he was not amused.  
  
With a deep sigh, Elrond folded his hands together and arched his eyebrows. The rest of the council took this as a sign that he had made up his mind. They waited with bated breath.  
  
"Bring forth the human." Elrond said. His aides looked at him blankly. "The thing that fell from the sky." He hissed. Their eyes filled with comprehension (or perhaps tears) and they marched off reluctantly, only to return a few minutes later with a strangely docile Susan. She was staring at something she held in her hands. Elrond cleared his throat to catch her attention. She gazed at him with eyes which were glazed over in what seemed to be an attempt at looking alluring. He shuddered.  
  
"It is the will of the council that you be part of the Fellowship of the Ring." He shouted above the roars of objection. "SO I HAVE SPOKEN! SO SHALL IT BE!"  
  
And then he left the chaos behind him in search of some really potent wine. 


	4. In which there was sword play

iThe Mary Sue's Guide to Middle heart -uh- Middle earth -uh- Middleerath -dammit- Middle-earth has this to say about actually being in Middle-earth:  
  
"Get out. NOW."  
  
However, having a fine understanding about Mary Sues and how they worked (or rather, did not work, as the reliability of their brains to function was inversely proportional to the amount of hotness in their immediate surroundings. As one went up, the other plummeted into the depths of despair), the Mary Sue's Guide to Middle-earth also had this to say about being in Middle-earth:  
  
"Stay away from the man/elf/hobbit of your dreams. It can only end in tears."  
  
The Mary Sue's Guide to Middle-earth was a bestseller, not because of its finely tuned electrical circuits which gave the holder a fine shock if she so much as thought about her lust object, not because of its black cover on which was inscribed the words 'Teh Guide', and not even because it came in three different shades of purple.  
  
No, the real reason why the Mary Sue's Guide to Middle-earth was a bestseller was simply that its editor was determined to give it out to those who needed it most. His motto had been: For every Mary Sue that enters Middle-earth, there will be a Guide, and this Guide will be sold to her for free.  
  
It was a cheap tactic to put the Guide on the bestseller's lists, but it worked, for the number of Mary Sues who popped in and out of Middle-earth was ever increasing, and was particularly at its busiest around December.  
  
Not that they have Decembers in Middle-earth./i  
  
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Susan was not paying attention to anything Aragorn had to say. This was a mistake, as what Aragorn had to say at that moment had much to do with waving a sword around in a casually reckless manner.  
  
She was distracted by the Guide she hand in her hands - distracted and puzzled. Firstly, she had no idea how it had come to be under her bum that one morning in that dark room. Secondly, she had no idea why it kept telling her to go home. Finally, she had no idea why she kept getting frizzled every time she tried to do a search on Legolas.  
  
And now, she had no idea why Aragorn was asking her to pick up her sword.  
  
"My what?" She screeched, dropping the Guide as it sparked and sizzled menacingly.  
  
"Your sword. Pick it up." Aragorn said with as much patience as an eighty year old Numorean King could muster.  
  
"I don't have a." Susan noticed the gleaming blade which rested by her side. "Oooooooo!" She squealed, pouncing on it. "It's SO PRETTY!!!"  
  
Aragorn was very worried about the future of mankind.  
  
"Pick it up." He repeated after Susan had finished admiring herself in the reflection of the blade. Susan glanced around her and noticed Legolas spying on them from the safe hold of a pillar.  
  
"Legolas! Watch me!" She cooed. Turning her attention to the sword, she wrapped her fingers around its handle and tugged.  
  
Nothing happened.  
  
All right, she thought, let's try that again. She tried lifting it with both hands, all the while flashing a nonchalant smile at those watching. The hobbits had now gathered around Legolas, trying to prevent him from collapsing under the full blast of Susan's smile.  
  
Susan rolled up the sleeves of the dress she had borrowed (all right, stolen) from Arwen and clenched her teeth. She counted to ten, then heaved with all her might.  
  
"YES!" She crowed, holding the sword over her head. "I ROCK! I'M SO COOL! LOOK AT ME, LEGS!" It took Susan a few moments to realize that she was toppling over. It was the crash of her head against the ground that finally alerted her to the fact that she had fallen over. Unfortunately, by the time this had happened, she was already unconscious.  
  
Beside her, the Mary Sue's Guide to Middle-earth beeped in a manner not unlike 'I told you so!' 


End file.
